Last year we decided not to do Christmas. An interest in the ancient Mayan capital, Tikal, and a desire to show our small children some rainforest before there's none left, made Guatemala seem more attractive and so, bribing Fergus (four-and-a-half) and Edie (three) with rash promises of snorkelling and jungle adventure, we set off to discover lost worlds with one bag each and no seasonal gifts.

There are no direct flights from Europe and so, after days of flying and vomiting and connecting and vomiting, we eventually landed in Belize City, the nearest international airport to Tikal. This small, coastal town is the capital of Belize, a tiny ex-British colony whose proudest possession is the longest barrier reef in the Western hemisphere.

Guatemala lies in the opposite direction via endless mangrove swamps from which (or so the driver told our boggle-eyed son), crocodiles slink out at night to steal domestic garbage.

Initially we were headed for Blancaneaux Lodge, Francis Ford Coppola's private writing retreat just within the Belizean border. The Apocalypse Now director decided to build a second home on the exact spot at which he lost his spectacles while trekking and, when he's not in residence, paying guests may stay here. Fergus and Edie were thrilled with our luxurious thatched cabana with its glamourously open-air shower and organic green soap. Their parents pretended not to be impressed that Brooke Shields and Robert De Niro had been here first.

Without televisions or telephones, there are simply thousands of acres of changing cloud forest for entertainment and, at dinner, we chatted to a couple from Putney and ate genuine wood-fired pizza while their two delightful daughters taught our offspring to play Monopoly. Being dropped off at the public bus stop the next morning felt almost like punishment.

The moment we crossed the border into Spanish Central America, however, we were transported into a different world where buses are rainbow-coloured, punctual and cheap, the streets smell of burning beef and coffee, and the people shout but no one hustles. We speak Spanish but it was, nevertheless, charming that everyone wanted to be our friend.

Real rainforest is wet and dark and dense. As we approached Tikal the following morning at dawn, the sky was covered with thick, black clouds. Small, hairy pigs ran across our path while the comedores (local eating places) began brewing up their first small cups of strong black coffee with sugar. These came with tortillas and frijoles (refried beans) - the Guatemalan standard breakfast (and lunch and dinner). Monkeys howled and parrots screeched and the occasional splash of a bright red toucan beak suddenly pierced the green canopy.

Fergus and Edie started an impromptu, and extremely muddy, game of football with the children of the comedor owner. They generously let the blonde gringita win while her parents wondered why they hadn't brought raincoats or wellies.

The Guatemalans stood under small thatched shelters in their multi-coloured PVC ponchos. When the rain finally stopped, however, and we turned the corner into the ruined enormity of the Great Plaza, even the kids forgot that they were soaking wet.

Tikal was at its height between AD300 and AD800 when there were more than one million Mayans living in the area. The steps of the stone temple in the middle of the courtyard are so steeply graded that several overenthusiastic turistas tumble off each year and die.

The Ball Court most immediately engaged our children. Here, Mayans played games of squash, after which the losing team was decapitated, giving a whole new impetus to the manager's half-time talk. The kids were delighted with this hands-on, activity playground of a city but, as we climbed a slightly less death-defying palace wall, the heavens, once again, opened. 'Todo recto,' shouted the Guatemalans, running like hell.

However, we were not alone. After the civil war ended some six years ago, the official 'tourist police' was established and its officers mysteriously appear at various points throughout any trip to Guatemala. Efficient and rather kind, these silent men and women in black continually offer their services ('para servirles') and, as we marched though the jungle, accompanied by a genuine army soldier with a convincingly real gun, Fergus thought he was in heaven. Our protector stuck close and helped us carry the children to the very top of the legendary Temple IV, the pinnacle of Tikal's achievements. The green horizon spread out far beneath us while the steaming mist rose from an unbroken canopy of green, pierced only by the iceberg-like tips of three stone temples. Even the kids fell momentarily silent.

After this high, we headed for the gloriously named Mayan settlement, Chichicastenango. Every Sunday, the town transforms itself into one huge market, exploding with the bright colours of sub-tropical vegetables, traditional woven textiles and a crazy selection of handmade wooden masks. Most of the Mayans could speak some Spanish but were amazed we knew no Quiche. Fergus haggled in mime vigorously and came away with two masks and a woven hat and then we moved on to the lakeside town of Panajachel, affectionately known to locals as 'Gringotenango.'

Though it was 23 December and this is backpackers' heaven, we were lucky. The entire local clan was gathered in the mud-splattered internal courtyard of our tiny hostel for the Mayan New Year. We watched for three hours as the high priest (a 20-year-old called Pedro who works as a barman in a local hotel) carefully created a stone calendar circle. He filled it with ash, placed coloured candles at cardinal points and then, in a mixture of Spanish and Quiche, incanted a prayer thanking the weekday gods while throwing symbolic libations on to the roaring fire. Our kids stared, awestruck, as beer, cigarettes and candles all went into the flames in an amazing display of the modern seamlessly blended with the ancient.

On Christmas Eve we arrived in Antigua, the ancient colonial capital and a World Heritage Site. Though much of this gorgeous yellow and white sixteenth-century city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1773, what remains is beautiful. Masked men in pink ran crazily around corners to avoid the volley of fire crackers which, traditionally, get thrown by local children over the festive season. Prensa Libre, the national newspaper, stated that 'only 20' people had died this Christmas in unfortunate incendiary incidents.

We missed most of these, however, because we spent Christmas Day climbing the only active volcano in the area. A local man called Juanxto drove us to Pacaya in his van, clinging to a door which wouldn't close, and his arthritic friend Virgilio led us up the slope. Fergus doggedly marched the entire four and a half kilometres and then scrambled and slid his way triumphantly to the crater. We took it in turns to carry Edie, who narrowly escaped asphyxiation since no one had warned us about the spewing, sulphurous fumes. Briefly, we stood on the smoking ash and then, holding hands, we screed the whole way down the mountain. For our fearless four-year-old, this was five minutes of Cool.

Leaving Guatemala with its friendly peo ple, awesomely good value and incredible concentration of culture, we took a ferry back to the south of Belize, much of which had been devastated by Hurricane Iris two months earlier. We had never seen such post-apocalyptic chaos but the kids, who do not differentiate between 'luxury' and 'shanty', loved it. They wanted to pick the clapperboard and the nails from the sand and play 'Bob the Builder', accompanied by the sound of tapping and sawing as the local population continued to rebuild their lives.

Chastened, we headed north through more rain forest towards Belize's tourist magnet, the Cayes. Most visitors never see the mainland but spend their packaged holiday on one of these low-lying paradise islands, lurching between the dive-boat and the bar of one of the many super-efficient, super-expensive resort-style hotels.

On New Year's Eve we took a 'water taxi' to the slightly alternative Caye Caulker, and spent the evening pushing the kids around on a tyre hung from a beach palm-tree before falling asleep in a happy family heap at 9.30pm.

We could not leave without succumbing to that 'holiday of a lifetime' experience. Ninety per cent of the guests at the Victoria House Hotel on Ambergris Caye, are American; the other 10 are on honeymoon and all the prices are in US dollars.

From the private dive-jetty other guests sped to the famous Blue Hole but, less ambitiously, we took the kids out to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve where they bobbed about in lifejackets while we towed them on pieces of string.

They put their heads under the water and stroked the stingrays and the sharks and blew bubbles at the shoals of tropical fish beneath them. They loved it, but when our bar bill began to approach the cost of one night's stay, we knew it was time to leave.

For some years now, we've had a pathetic fantasy of sitting on some jacaranda-strewn terrace sipping a quiet cocktail while our children sleep peacefully inside and, at the Victoria House Hotel we achieved it. It was horrendously expensive - but I think we might go away every Christmas.

Factfile

Getting there: Esther Selsdon and family flew with British Airways via Dallas and then American Airlines to Belize City with the world's worst connection time: 23 hours and 15 mins. Tickets available from Trailfinders at £385 return inc tax for adults and £281 for children under 12. Flight time to Dallas (or Miami - also an overnight connection) is 10 hours and Dallas to Belize is a further two-and-a-half hours. Continental Airlines flies from Gatwick via Huston (also an overnight connection) at £550. BA flies direct to Cancun in Mexico for £429 return. Trailfinders (020 7937 5400). Prices available for travel before December 20.

Getting around: There are no trains. In Belize car hire is roughly $100 (£66) per day from Crystal (00 501 2 31600). We took local buses which are cheap and very punctual if rather infrequent. Guatemalan buses are fabulously cheap (£8 to travel from north to south of the country) and punctual and each bus station has a timetable on the wall.

Staying in Belize:Blancaneaux Lodge, Mountain Pine Ridge (501-92 378). Family room available from $180 (£120) per night. Victoria House, Ambergris (Caye, 501 26 2067). Family room available from $175 (£116) per night. Hamanasi, Hopkins Village (501 5 12073). Family room available from $195 (£130) per night.

Staying in Guatemala: Various perfectly clean backpacker type places (most with hot showers between £4 and £14 per room night) which we found in the highly informative Footprint Mexico & Central America Handbook. Lonely Planet publishes Belize Guatemala & Yucatan which is good for practical information.

About this article

Walking in the jungle what do you see?

This article appeared on p2 of the Observer Escape section of the Observer
on Saturday 5 October 2002.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 13.07 EDT on Sunday 6 October 2002.
It was last modified at 13.07 EDT on Monday 2 October 2006.
It was first published at 19.00 EST on Tuesday 21 November 2006.